I arrived at 800 Smithe St, Vancouver, -the Supreme Court of BC at the designated hour of 8am on Monday, March 6th/07. I was there to support the redoubtable Betty Krawczyk, British Columbia's most famous and beloved 78-year-old, non-violent, civil-disobedient ancient forest protection activist as she was sentenced to jail, once again, for standing firm against the wanton destruction of rare, ancient forest ecosystems.

I didn't see any other treehuggers around at first, but in preparation for the events ahead, I took a few pictures of the entrance to the hallowed halls of British Columbia justice. Immediately I pulled out my camera, and a Sheriff came charging out of the building and told me that if I was intending on coming in, I would have to check it in at the front desk. Having crashed at a friends place the previous night, I had a small suitcase with me and a satchel containing some blankets, random bicycle tools, books etc. which would also have to be checked in.

Betty Krawczyk is 75 years old and is currently being held at the Burnaby Correctional
Centre for Women. She was sentenced on October 14, 2003 to 6 months in
prison for criminal contempt of court.

Last spring, Betty was arrested in the ancient forests of the Upper
Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island. She was peacefully blockading
Weyerhaeuser's logging trucks along with others from Women in The
Woods. She was protesting the BC Liberal's Working Forest proposal.

Prior to this sentence, she had already spent 4 months in prison. This
four months was for refusing to sign an undertaking promising not to go
near logging operations until the end of her trial. This gives her a
total of 10 months in prison for protesting Campbell's Working Forest
proposal. She is currently appealing her sentence.

Betty
has been sent to jail several times for her activism. This time, the
judge did not give her credit for the four months she served while
awaiting trial. At the sentencing he said."Her confinement is entirely
the result of her refusal [to sign the undertaking]. . . . I consider
her confinement to be comparable to a self-inflicted wound,"

Betty Krawczyk is the author of Lock Me Up or
Let me Go. The book tells of her story of struggling to prevent logging
of old-growth forest in the Elaho Valley, and of her time in the
Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women.

Below is an open letter Betty wrote to BC Solicitor General Rich
Coleman. It is about the conditions inside the Burnaby Correctional
Centre for Women.

As an inmate in Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women since June 24, 2003,
I am writing to advise you that your governments cut backs in prison
staff and services at BCCW have resulted in an inmate over crowding
to a degree
that is
unacceptable in a civilized country.

Regardless of what any of us did to become prisioners in Burnaby Correctional
Centre for Women, we are women still, and human, and not animals. Further
more the majority of us are citizens of British Columbia.

When any women is incarcerated she has a human right to cleaniness. To
clean bedding and a clean mattress, to clean clothes and to clean femine
hygiene, to clean food and clean eating utensils, and a space to put her
belongings. All of this becomes problematic if not impossible under the
conditions of extreme over crowding that is now the norm at BCCW.

This over crowding was recently made even worse by the closure of the Open
Living Unit part of the prison. Your governments propensity to make
the poor pay for your tax break to the rich has resulted in the poorest
of the poor women being virtually stuffed into a grossly inadequate living
spaces. Two women in a five by eight cell with a toilet and one bunk and a extra
mattress to be thrown on the floor next to the toilet.

There are transmitted diseases in this prison. Women in here suffer a variety
of aliments ranging from HIV, infections, Hep C, numerous skin and
respiratory diseases, STD diseases and a plethora of mental and emotional
disturbances
that underlie many of the addiction problems. And with the many drastic
cut backs in prison staff many other inmate health problems simply go unnoticed.

Sir,
you and the Premier may think that because there is little outside
sympathy for prisoners that we may be treated as waste material to be
managed, and a provincial government who treats us in such barbaric
ways will eventually answer not only to this province, but to the
opinion of the world.

By 8:30 am, a crowd had begun to shape up which became identifiable as
supporters of Betty. Soon there were about 50 of us. At that point
someone came out and said that Betty would be arriving at the other end
of the courthouse, so we should walk to the other end of the block,
which we did. When we arrived at the other end, we encountered a much
larger crowd which had assembled there. There were a lot of cameras and
a large media presence and a good deal of excitement as the crowd
anticipated the arrival of Betty. She then pulled up in a taxi and
strode up the stairs to give her last interview to the media. As she
was speaking, someone came by who warned me that everyone who wished to
be in the courtroom was being searched, so we'd better get in the
queue. Things were happening pretty fast.

I got into the queue just ahead of Adriane Carr, Paul George and Joy
Foy, (-the only three of BC's prominent environmentalists who bothered
to attend) and as we stood in line to get searched, I saw Betty walk
by, alone and totally focussed, heading into the courtroom through the
same entrance as us. She passed ahead of the crowd, and then
disappeared down the steps into the "Bunker" courtroom, which was
specially built in the basement of the building for the Air India
terrorist trials. Security was taking its time, but somehow, there was
an expectation that in spite of the strict security requirement, that
the trial would at least wait for Betty's supporters to get searched
and then to fill the courtroom. The three security guards were
labouriously searching through peoples pockets, confiscating certain
items which could not be allowed in the court, ie: machine-guns,
knives, cameras, food, cream pies or tape-recorders.

Luckily, the search wasn't quite as comprehensive as expected and after
turning over my suitcase to the protection of the court, I was allowed
to descend into the Bunker. As soon as I got in, I saw that about 40
people had preceded me, and the gallery was about 30% full. I saw a
woman speaking from the front of the room and I could see Betty sitting
there all alone, below. As I took my front-row seat, I realized that
this was "Madame Justice" Brown herself already at work, reading out
her sentence. They had already begun, but most of the courtroom was
still empty, while the queue crawled slowly through the extremely
zealous security. Actually, I must have been one of the last who got
in, -Adriane, Paul and Joe didn't make it.

Brown's statement was a damnable, rotten piece of work, shockingly rude
and nasty, and blatantly vindictive towards Betty. I have been
endeavouring to get a transcript, as this sentence-statement by the
Judge so amply clarifies the depths to which the quality and integrity
of our legal system has plummeted. Brown is clearly furious with, and
despises Betty, perhaps moreso since shecruelly sentenced Betty's
partner-in-crime, the frail 71-year-old Pacheena Elder, Harriet Nahanie
to14 days in the Surrey Pre-Trial Remand Centre,a hideous "Hell-hole"
dungeon. The Judgewasovertly angry that Betty has been emphasizing this
sordid aspect of this sorry saga. Brown's statement, and whatever she
said at Harriet's sentencing epitomizes just how shameless, grovelling,
evil and corrupt our legal system really is. Anyone who knows Betty
Krawczyk or Harriet Nahanie, anyone who has met these women, for anyone
who has ever giventhem the time of day knows thatthese brave women are
notcriminals.They aregentle, ferocious pacifist, feminist mentors,
icons of determination, courage, honesty and human decency, -tireless
and relentless activists for the protection of our planet. In
short,theyare heros, whose fame and reputation is increasing by the
day. I was utterly disgusted in that courtroom and I joined into the
chorus of jeers that rang out as soon as the cowardly Judge read out
her sentence to Betty. "I sentence you to 10 months" she said, and then
repeated it. It was a petulant slap in the face from a pompous,
remorseless bureaucrat who had just three weeks ago issued the death
sentence to Harriet Nahanie for "disrespecting the court."

It's not as though there was no precedent by which the corporate-lackey
Brown-noser Brown and the BC legal system could have used discretion in
dealing with Betty, Harriet, or any of the Eagleridge Heights
protesters. Justice William Grist in May, 2006 could have refused to
grant the American developer Kiewit their injunction and insist that
the authorities arrest Betty using the existing legal framework. The
police should have arrested Betty, Harriet and the protesters
immediately and charged them as was their duty, instead of waiting
around for the court injunction.
Several years ago the late Madame Justice Quijano refused to issue the
Gordon Campbell government a court injunction to remove protesters from
their proposed 150-slot Winnebozo parking lot which they wanted to plow
out of the forest at Cathedral Grove. The Judge remarked that should
the government wish to remove the protesters, it had all the means
available to do so using existing laws. This is exactly what Betty is
after, -she wants to be treated just like any other criminal ~ by
getting arrested and then making her case before the court. She simply
wants a fair trial so that she can expose the rot and corruption which
is destroying our forests. There is no possible court challenge for
those who defy a court injunction, -which is pretty ideal for situation
all Neocon zealot governments love. After the Campbell government was
not able to get its court injunction at Cathedral Grove, it preferred
to suffer a belligerent and humiliating Treesitting blockadealong a
busy highway for two years rather than useexisting laws to arrest the
protestors. Ultimatelythey capitulated and gave up on their parking lot
scheme, rather than face forest-loving citizens in court. The
government was stymied because its logging policies are indefensible
and cannot stand up to any kind of court challenge.

Once Betty had been sentenced and had left the courtroom, we climbed
the stairs out of the Bunker, gathered up our belongings from the
security and emerged to find the other 100 supporters who had been
barred entry to the courtroom angrily describing their experience to
the cameras. People were very angry and upset and there were a lot of
tears. There were sustained, powerful 10-minute continuous Shame!
Shame, Shame!!! chanting sessions which filled the whole courthouse
right up to its soaring glass ceilings. And a large contingent of First
Nations women struck up their drums and sang a very beautiful dirge
which went on and on, and got everyone singing. After about an hour, it
seemed like things were wrapping up, but when Jeremy got up on a wall
and suggested that we should stage an impromptu march around the court
building, everyone joined in.

But when we got around to the opposite side, everyone suddenly turned
spontaneously and filed strait into the doors at 800 Smithe. We all
marched right into the building and when the Sheriffs set up a cordon
at the secondary doors into the inner sanctum, 18 of us sat down and
blocked the doors. About 60 people milled around the rotunda. They were
only allowing lawyers through the cordon, but as it turned out later,
we shut down the Supreme Court of BC for 3 hours. All the media was
crowding the windows as cameras are not permitted in the building.

Eventually, a Sheriff came rushing down and announced that he was
serving us with,~yep, you guessed it, -anothercourt injunction, and
that we had 60 seconds to get out of the way. At this time a dozen RCMP
officers arrived to make the arrests, so havingdisrupted the court for
three hoursmost of us got up and moved, but it turns out that 2 people
did get arrested. We didn't have to move far though, because it was
interpreted that the injunction specified that while the protesters
could not block access to the court or interfere with the process of
justice, that didn't preclude them frommilling around and loitering in
the lobby. Treehuggers loitering around the BC Supreme Court can be
pretty annoying, apparently. Gradually, over a period of another 45
minutes, the Police moved up their cordon and pushed us out of the
building. Then the demonstration continued for another hour outside the
door, and during this time the Police refused entry to everyone,
including the lawyers. We chanted and the First Nations drummers sang
and danced.

This spontaneous demonstration kept getting new life breathed into it
and every time I got ready to leave, something else happened. For the
final event, I was watching as a taxi pulled up and saw the media rush
over. Suddenly British Columbia's Attorney General Wally Oppal himself,
-the Supreme Representative of the BC Legal System and Betty's nemesis,
emerged from the car and the media immediately swarmed him, eager to
hear about his recently divulged prostate issue. Oppal obviously does
not have a clue about the internationally-recognized case of Betty
Krawczyk, and the shame and ill-repute her dreadful treatment has
brought down on the BC legal system. Immediately the Oppal was
recognized, sustained shouts of Shame! Shame drowned him out and
finally drove him back into his taxi and he was taken away.

Here are a few words from Betty's blog regarding Oppal: "...Recently
Mr. Wally Opal on CKNW said that anybody in BC facing prison time could
have a jury trial. But when I called into the program and advised Mr.
Opal that I was facing prison time on a Criminal Contempt of Court
charge and wasn't allowed a jury trial he said well, in my case the
judge was quite right not to allow me a jury trial; as I was arrested
under civil contempt and that civil contempt did not warrant a jury
trial. And yet here I am, once again convicted of Contempt of Court,
not Civil, but Criminal, minus a jury trial, or the protections of the
Criminal Code. My Lady, the very expediency of this method of depriving
citizens of their lawful rights when they seek to protect the
environment from corporate predators is quite remarkable. I protest
this, My Lady, and will protest it with my dying breath..."

I encourage people to take the opportunity to visit Betty. If you have
got any faith at all that justice is possible in British Columbia, or
that environmental issues can be forwarded through due process through
our institutionally corrupt government and legal mechanisms, then you
need to see the reality of our deeply rotten system. You'll get that
direct experience and see for yourself by visiting dear Betty in jail.